ABSTRACT

Community based participatory research (CBPR) centers the voices of community members in the research process. Long used in the field of healthcare, criminal justice researchers have employed CBPR only in limited contexts, and never in the context of prosecution research. This paper reports on findings from a CBPR study that employed focus groups with justice-involved individuals to identify their perceptions of the pre-trial process, prosecutors’ priorities, and recommended directions for research. The findings from these focus groups were used as the basis for developing interview questions for prosecutors, which were subsequently implemented in two larger research projects examining prosecutor discretion. This paper, shares recommendations for prosecution researchers seeking to implement CBPR in future work. Keywords: Community-Based Participatory Research; Prosecution, Focus Groups

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a framework that places local community members at the center of the research process. As an orientation toward research, CBPR has been used extensively in the field of healthcare and health equity (e.g., Filler et al., 2021; Ortiz, 2020) as well as with incarcerated individuals (e.g. Hatton & Fisher, 2011; Teng & Gordon, 2021) as a way of “foster[ing] equitable partnership, capacity building, co-learning, and action” (DeJonkeree et al, p. 482). Rarely, however, has CBPR been used in research on the courts and court actors, despite the potential for researchers to be informed by the lived experiences of those directly impacted by the criminal justice system.

This paper describes the adaptation of CBPR to research on prosecutor decision-making. Working within two larger projects centered on prosecutor discretion, the research team held focus groups with individuals who had been defendants in the same jurisdictions under study. In these discussions, justice-involved community members identified the issues and questions they viewed as most pressing to the local community. These conversations were used to develop prosecutor interview protocols that were subsequently implemented. Finally, after the prosecutor interview portion of the research was completed, the research team shared the results of the interviews with justice-involved individuals and elicited their feedback and reactions. Ultimately, centering the voices of defendants and formerly incarcerated persons, especially within court research, will result in knowledge that is more directly applicable to community members and will empower local communities.

After providing an overview of CBPR as an orientation to research and explaining the methods used in the project, the article presents results in two parts. First, the themes that local community members identified as most pressing are briefly described, followed by the prosecutor interview questions that resulted. Second, the article outlines best practices of CBPR in the criminal justice setting and how future researchers might adapt this method to their own research.

Overview of Community Based Participatory Research

CBPR is one of several related research frameworks, including action research and participatory research, that position community voices and experiences as central to the production of knowledge.1 A range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches that involve community members at discrete steps in the research process or as active participants throughout the life course of a project may qualify as CBPR (Khodyakov et al., 2012). Thus, it may be most useful to conceptualize CBPR as an orientation to research, rather than as a method itself (Minkler, 2005). CBPR has the potential to both promote community uptake of the knowledge that the research produces, strengthen the research design and data collection process itself, and give power back to traditionally marginalized populations (Fahlberg, 2023; Harrington, 2019; Stoecker, 2009). As such, CBPR is both a helpful and effective research framework.

Fundamental to CBPR is the idea that researchers and local partners co-create knowledge about a topic of importance to the community, and that knowledge is then used in service to the community. In many cases, these local partners are members of underserved populations, and CBPR serves to “elevate [their] voices…by directly centering narratives that are not experienced by researchers in the academy” (Harrington, 2019, p. 215). Drawing upon the voices and perspectives of marginalized groups is particularly meaningful as these individuals are may be excluded from public discourse and policy-making. Thus, a CBPR approach “refuses to speak for, but stretches to speak with” (Fine et al., 2003, p. 196) community members. In sum, CBPR allows researchers to target their research to the problems identified by community members as most pressing, while also centering the lived experiences of community members and their diverse perspectives.

Elements of CBPR

CBPR comprises a continuum of involvement from community members, rather than a pre-set series of immutable steps (Khodyakov et al., 2012). While some researchers may choose to primarily draw upon community members’ knowledge at the research design stage, others may additionally involve them in data collection or analysis (Stocker, 2009). In a study examining types of community involvement in behavioral health research, Khodyakov et al. (2012) found that extent of involvement was best captured using an index that indicated at which points the researchers had partnered with community members. For example, whereas 70% of the research projects had actively involved community members in recruiting study participants, a much smaller percentage of projects had involved community members in conducting background research (23%) or selecting research methods (28%). Other research invites those with lived experience to be full members of the research team, including publishing the results of the research (e.g., Fine et al., 2003; Thrasher et al., 2019).

Most research inherently reflects the inequal power structures between researchers and subjects (Farrell et al., 2021). Consequently, a successful partnership with community members to co-create knowledge must be built upon a foundation of cultural humility, requiring that researchers consider the role of established hierarchies and need for self-reflection (Minkler, 2005). Originally proposed as component of multicultural training of physicians in patients encounters (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998), this concept is also helpful in conceptualizing the dynamic between researchers and the local communities, as cultural humility “help[s] us understand and address the impacts of professional cultures (which tend to be highly influenced by white, western, patriarchal belief systems), as these help shape interactions between outside researchers and their community partners” (Minkler, 2005, p. i4-ii5). A central component to this process is transferring power from the research team to community members by “explaining that [community members] are the experts and that the team is here to learn from them” (Harrington et al., p. 15). Cultural humility and transfer of power are, thus, both fundamental to CBPR and must be established at the outset of the project.

Further, researchers should consider their own positionality, or how the researchers’ membership in demographic groups (e.g., their race, class, gender) may impact the outcomes of the research (Merriam et al., 2001). Positionality is a reflexive process that asks researchers to consider their place and role in traditional power structures and how these may shape the direction and interpretation of the research (Rose, 1997; Bourkc, 2014). Many underserved communities, and particularly those with criminal justice contact, are racial and ethnic minorities (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2019) and are more likely to be of a lower socioeconomic status as compared to researchers. Because community members should feel comfortable directing the course of the research, researchers engaging in CBPR should consider how to equalize power dynamics from the outset of the research project (see Harrington et al., 2019, for a discussion).

Finally, at the conclusion of the research, the research team should convey the findings of the project back to community members. Failing to do so may prompt resentment in the community and a sense of “research abandonment” (Harrington et al., 2019, p. 14) that may cause community members to become disillusioned with the research process as a whole. This sense of abandonment can be compounded by researchers’ historical maltreatment of vulnerable populations, which still resides in many individuals’ perceptions of researchers (Farrell, et al., 2021; Townsend, 2019). Consequently, the final steps of CBPR should involve reporting the results of the research back to the community in a clear, concise, and usable format (Harrington et al., 2019; Townsend, 2019).

CBPR in Criminal Justice Research

There is a well-established tradition of CBPR within the fields of healthcare and health equity (e.g., Corrigan et al., 2015; Filler et al., 2021; Minkler, 2005; Ortiz, 2020; Windsor, 2013), as well as increasing usage of CBPR when it comes to addressing other social issues such as alcohol and substance abuse (Windsor, 2013) civic engagement (Harrington et al., 2019), and sexual harassment (Brinkman et al., 2021). Within criminal justice research, there has been an increased use of participatory approaches to research within the last several years. For example, Hayashi et al. (2012) involved individuals with a substance use disorder in collecting data from other individuals with a substance use disorder. Other examples of CBPR in the criminal justice context include involving sex workers as peer-researchers in understanding services provided to sex workers (Jobe et al., 2022), and inviting survivors of human trafficking to provide feedback and context within a project to combat human trafficking (Miller et al., 2022; see Townsend et al., 2019 for additional examples). Another area of research engages the current and formerly incarcerated in designing research addressing, for example, recidivism (Marlow et al., 2015; McCracken, 2019), reentry (Teng & Gordon, 2021), homelessness (Martin et al., 2012), higher education (Fine et al., 2003) and healthcare in prison (Hatton & Fisher, 2011).

However, to the author’s knowledge, in existing research justice-involved individuals are not given the opportunity to shape the direction of research involving court systems or courtroom actors. The American criminal justice system has a longstanding history of racially biased practices that have disproportionately impacted communities of color and that continue to the present day (Gonzalez Van Cleve, 2020). A large body of research highlights the ways in which people of color receive more punitive outcomes than similarly situated white defendants at charging (e.g., Albonetti, 1987; Beichner & Spohn, 2005), plea bargaining (e.g, Kutateladze et al., 2014), and sentencing (e.g, Mitchell, 2005; Spohn, 2000). Consequently, while shifting the balance of power is meaningful in many contexts, it is particularly significant within the scope of the criminal justice system.

Present Study

The power differential between criminal defendants and prosecutors is particularly acute. The vast discretion given to prosecutors is unmatched by any other criminal court actor. Prosecutors, often called the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, have the capacity to dictate the course of a criminal case via charging decisions, plea offers, and sentencing recommendations (Medwed, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2022). In large part, prosecutors hold defendants’ fate in their hands. Thus, by offering former criminal defendants the opportunity to engage in designing research on prosecution, our work helps highlight one of the largest power differentials in the justice system and give voice to marginalized community members.

The primary aim of this paper is to provides future researchers with tangible advice on how to adapt the principles of CBPR the arena of courts research. To this end, it outlines in detail methodological questions faced by the research team and decisions that the research team made as this phase of the research progressed.

Methods

Below, are described participant inclusion criteria, recruitment method, and general characteristics of the focus group participants. Next follows a discussion of the research team’s positionality and the importance of cultural humility, and how the team addressed existing power structures by identifying a focus group moderator with whom participants would feel comfortable sharing freely.

The community focus groups described here were one component of two larger projects on prosecutor decision-making: the Partnering with Prosecutors to Reduce Racial Disproportionalities Project (PWP) and the Local Prosecution Reform Project (LPR). The goals of the PWP project were to research charging, plea bargaining, and sentencing equity and the role that prosecutor discretion played in these outcomes. Conversely, the LPR project focused on the extent to which reform-minded district attorneys could affect racial disparities in their jurisdictions. These mixed-methods projects involved interviews with prosecutors as well as quantitative analysis of administrative case management data.2 These projects operated under a human subjects protection plan that required all jurisdictions and participants to remain anonymous. Therefore, we refer to each jurisdiction using a pseudonym: Brookside, Creston, Edenport, and Greendale in the PWP, and Fairgrove and Hillside in the LPR. Each jurisdiction has a population of between and 200,000 and a little over 1,000,000 and each leans Democratic in national elections. The prosecutors’ offices participating in the study employed between 15 and 70 prosecutors.

As the first phase each project, the author held focus groups with community members who had had contact with the criminal legal system as defendants. The goal in these initial focus groups was to learn what issues these affected community members viewed as most important and to then investigate those issues in subsequent interviews with prosecutors. In order to recruit participants, the lead prosecutor in each jurisdiction helped identify local community groups serving justice-involved individuals. The author then held initial planning meetings with the heads of these community organizations (one in each jurisdiction) to discuss the goals of the focus groups and recruitment of focus group members.

Inclusion Criteria

During these preliminary meetings, the author met with the community organization leaders to outline the inclusion criteria for the focus groups. These criteria included that the participants must be over the age of 18 (as required by the human subjects protection plan) and their case must have been adjudicated within the jurisdiction of study within the past 5 years. 3 Because the focus of the larger research project was prosecutors’ felony case processing decisions, participants must have been charged with at least one felony offense, and misdemeanor-only defendants were not eligible to participate. Participation was open to individuals with any disposition on their charges, including those whose cases were diverted as well as those who were returning from a term of incarceration, as well as any length of prior criminal history. Finally, we asked that the organization leader to actively recruit individuals from minority populations who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Community organization leaders confirmed that Zoom was an adequate format to hold focus groups and that they could ensure computer access for any individuals wishing to participate but who did not have access to the necessary technology (see below for a discussion of Zoom as a medium).

Focus Group Logistics

A total of six focus groups were held remotely via Zoom from August to November 2022. Focus groups lasted approximately 60 to 90 minutes. In total, 24 participants attended the focus groups. Of these, eight (33.3%) participants were White, 16 (66.7%) were African American, and two (8.33%) were Hispanic. Participants were compensated for their time with $100 Visa gift cards. Although participants were not specifically asked about the nature of their prior contact with the justice system, the majority of participants chose to disclose their charges and the type of sentences they had received. Most participants had been convicted of drug possession offenses, with just a few convicted of serious violent offenses such as robbery and assault.

Participants were asked to turn their cameras on when possible in order to participate. During the focus groups, only the author and the moderator (discussed below) could be seen on camera. The author remained visible on camera in order to answer questions about the research project or the content of the questions. The remaining researchers turned their cameras off and kept them off for the duration of the focus groups. This decision was made in consultation with the moderator, who deemed it helpful in fostering a sense of informality between participants, as opposed to a a sense that the meeting was formal or academic with “right” and “wrong” answers.4

Positionality

Early in the project, the members of the researcher team discussed who was best suited to moderate the focus groups. Of the three researchers involved in the project, only one (the author) identifies as a member of a minority group (Hispanic female). Additionally, none of the researchers have had direct contact with the criminal justice system. Consequently, the research team recognized that, in order for focus group members to feel comfortable to speak freely, a moderator who understood and identified with community members’ experiences as justice-impacted individuals would be needed (see Breen, 2006).

In selecting a moderator, the most important considerations were identifying an individual who had had direct contact with the criminal justice system in order to create a comfortable atmosphere where the participants did not feel judgement or shame for their backgrounds. Another important consideration was experience with public speaking, as well as experience moderating discussions on criminal justice reform. Via social networks, the author identified a criminal justice reform advocate with extensive speaking experience and direct involvement with the criminal justice system to moderate the discussions.5 The moderator was compensated for his time with a pre-determined rate per focus group. The research team met with the moderator prior to the first focus group to discuss the goal of the focus groups and address any questions he had about the research project. Directly after the first focus group, the author and the moderator discussed how to improve subsequent focus groups. During this conversation, the moderator made several suggestions, including re-ordering the questions. These suggestions were adopted in subsequent focus groups.

Cultural Humility

The focus groups each opened with the moderator introducing himself and then inviting the lead author to explain the purpose of the focus group. The author introduced herself and the study, then explained the goal of the discussion. Participants were informed that their views would be used to identify key themes deemed important by the local justice-involved community and that the research team would use those themes to develop interview questions for prosecutors. Consistent with an approach centered on cultural humility, she framed the researchers as learners and acknowledged that she did not share their experiences of direct contact with the criminal justice system. Although available to answer questions, she explained that the moderator would be responsible for directing the conversation. The goal of this transfer of power to the moderator was to emphasize that lived experiences are valuable and that those directly impacted by the justice system (including the moderator himself) were the experts on the topic, rather than the researchers (Harrington, et al., 2019). Consistent with this goal, the moderator maintained an informal tone. This approach to establishing a conversational atmosphere appeared successful as, early in the discussion, participants freely shared their backgrounds and personal struggles. Debriefing with the moderator confirmed this impression of the group dynamics.

Focus Group Questions

The moderator opened the discussion by first providing his background and the nature of his own direct experience with the justice system. He then informally outlined the general guidelines for the discussion (e.g., respect others’ views, turn off cell phones, etc.). These guidelines were left intentionally broad so as to set a conversational tone. Finally, he explained that the discussion was confidential.

Moving into the discussion itself, the moderator first asked participants to introduce themselves and share their motivation for volunteering to participate in the focus group discussion. Following introductions, participants were asked to share positive and negative experiences they had had with the court system.6 Additional questions that guided the discussion included “Suppose that you were in charge and could make one change that would make the local criminal court system better. What would you do?” and “If you could sit down with a prosecutor and ask him or her one thing, what would you ask?” (see Appendix A and Appendix B for focus group protocols).7 Finally the focus group concluded with the moderator sharing a summary of the discussion and asking participants if any important points were left out of the summary.

Analysis

The focus groups discussions were recorded with participants’ permission and the researchers took detailed notes. These notes were cleaned and entered into the Dedoose qualitative software program. The research team believed that the use of pre-determined categories to code the focus groups might obscure important issues raised by participants and therefore chose to take a general inductive approach (Thomas, 2006). The goal of an inductive analysis is to “allow research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant, or significant themes inherent in raw data” (Thomas, 2006, p. 238). Thus, the method used was similar to a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), in that the researchers were not aiming to test particular hypotheses, but differed as the ultimate aim of the analysis was to distill meaningful categories that reflected participant concerns, rather than generate an explanatory theory (see Thomas, 2006 for a detailed comparison of these and related methods).

Consistent with an inductive approach, the author first conducted a detailed reading of each set of notes to gain a general understanding of the issues raised by participants. Broad categories were then created based on common themes described by participants within and between focus groups. In identifying themes, the author focused on instances where the defendants drew on their personal experiences and connected these to broader issues that they perceived as problematic within the justice system. These initial categories were then evaluated for overlapping concepts and similar experiences and collapsed as necessary (Thomas, 2006). The themes identified by the author were then discussed by the full research team to ensure accuracy and any disagreements were discussed and reconciled. In the end, seven primary themes (outlined below) were identified from the focus groups.8 In quoting participants below, a shorthand is used for referring to focus groups held in different jurisdictions (the first letter of the jurisdiction pseudonym followed by “FG” for “Focus Group,” for example “CFG” for the focus group held in Creston).

Focus Group Themes

This section provides a brief description of themes that focus group participants shared as the most pressing issues and questions within prosecution and how these were adapted into prosecutor interview questions for inclusion in the interview protocols. Seven common themes were identified: prosecutor motivations, prosecutors’ use of criminal history, the need for prosecutors to humanize defendants, power imbalances and transparency, racial biases, defendant rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration, and community engagement.

Prosecutor Motivations

One of the primary questions that focus group participants had for prosecutors was what their motivation was for working in prosecution. Participants wondered what prosecutors’ ultimate goal was in taking a job that entailed depriving people of their freedom and held severe consequences for defendants’ loved ones. As one participant put it, “What makes you want to be the one to send people to jail? What gives you the drive… to take someone away from their family?” (EFG).

Prosecutors’ Use of Criminal History

Focus group participants were particularly frustrated that prosecutors had access to their criminal history and used it against them, even for unrelated crimes. “They painted a picture of me as a savage” (GFG) one participant emphasized, with another stating plainly “There’s more to me than just my record” (BFG). Participants believe that criminal history should not be accessible to prosecutors during charging because it is irrelevant to their guilt in the instant offense.

Humanizing Defendants

The need to humanize defendants – recognize their life circumstances and tailor a charge or disposition accordingly – was one of the primary themes discussed by participants. Humanization of the defendant was placed in stark contrast to labeling or stereotyping a defendant. As one participant shared: “We have family members, I’m a son, I’m a husband, I’m a father... I do have a heart. I’m not a monster. I’m a human being” (GFG). Another participant explained that he felt as if prosecutors were not sentencing him as a person, but instead as “a piece of paper” (EFG). Participants believed that if prosecutors had gotten to know them as “people, not numbers,” (CFG), they would have “more mercy and consideration” (BFG).

Power Imbalances and Transparency

Participants strongly believe that defendants and prosecutors are not evenly matched. Lack of legal knowledge and lack of resources left participants at a significant disadvantage when attempting to fight a criminal charge, even with the help of a public defender. They felt that this unequal distribution of power in the courtroom led to more punitive outcomes than they deserved for the crime of which they were accused. As one participant in Greendale put it, “people don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes… they’re not explaining [what’s happening], as the proceedings are going on.” This leads defendants to feel as if they have to nod and go along with whatever is happening in the courtroom.

Racial Biases

A theme discussed at length by participants was the disparate treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system. Most participants spoke about this topic in general terms, connecting current racial inequalities to the United States’ history of slavery, segregation, and racial oppression. Participants, particularly in Edenport and Fairgrove, felt that prosecutors “have an agenda to lock up Black and Brown communities” (EFG) and spent a significant amount of time discussing how prosecutors profit monetarily from doing so. Participants lamented that prosecutors’ actions result in distrust among Black community members, and as a result they are marginalizing the very communities they are attempting to serve.

Rehabilitation and Alternatives to Incarceration

Defendants’ ability to change and be rehabilitated through treatment programs was another theme discussed by participants. Most participants, especially those charged with drug offenses, felt that defendants should have a chance at redemption and rehabilitation, yet they did not view these as goals that the criminal justice system, broadly speaking, was capable of achieving. Simple “warehousing” (FFG) was ineffective and even harmful, whereas alternatives to incarceration provided promising avenues for change. Yet, participants were unclear as to why such opportunities were limited, or which defendants were provided access.

Community Engagement

A final theme discussed by participants was the need for prosecutors to meaningfully engage with the local community. Participants felt there was significant distrust among communities of color due to decades of racially biased treatment. If prosecutors were to physically go into local communities themselves, some of these ties could be mended. Town halls, especially if they included formerly incarcerated persons, were one specific type of event that participants felt would be helpful in building ties and fostering empathy between local communities and the prosecutors’ office.

Prosecutor Interview Questions

As a result of the information gained in the focus groups, the research team crafted corresponding interview questions, with accompanying probes, to be added to the prosecutor interview protocols for each study (see Table 1). These questions were developed after analyzing the focus group notes in Dedoose and workshopping potential prosecutor interview questions amongst the members of the research team. Each set of questions corresponds to a theme identified by participants as a pressing concern. The wording of each question was informed by best practices as detailed by Rubin and Rubin (2005) and Becker (1999) and informed by prior work by the research team interviewing prosecutors. The research team included a minimum of two interview questions per theme in order to capture the different concerns raised within that category.

Table 1. Focus Group Themes and Corresponding Prosecutor Interview Questions

Note: The questions for each project differed due to the separate focus of each, as well as some themes having been mentioned in the community focus groups in the LPR jurisdictions but not the PWP jurisdictions. For example, although humanizing defendants was raised as an issue in focus groups for both projects, only groups in jurisdictions participating in the LPR raised the question of community engagement.

The final interview protocol, therefore, included questions derived directly from community members concerns and priorities, supplemented by question drawn from existing literature on prosecution practices.

Avoiding Research Abandonment

Of crucial importance in CBPR is circling back to community members at the conclusion of the research. This is not only informative for them, but helps to avoid sense of disillusionment with the research process. Accordingly, upon the conclusion of the interview and analysis phase of the project, which spanned 2023 and early 2024, the author contacted the original focus group participants. Unfortunately, only three participants expressed interest, with the rest not responding to the original email or to follow-up emails. As it was clear that few of these original participants would be able to be reached, the research team decided contact the community leaders from the first phase of the project and requested that they share a call for participation in follow-up focus groups. At this stage, all participants were again offered $100 Visa gift cards as incentives to participate in follow-up focus groups. Ultimately, the author held four follow-up focus groups via Zoom from March to June 2024 with a total of eight participants.9 Of these eight participants, three had participated in the original focus groups and five were new participants. Each group lasted approximately 60 minutes and was led by the same moderator as the original focus groups.

Similar to the original focus groups, only one researcher (the author) was present with camera on. This researcher presented a summary of the results from each of the seven areas discussed above as areas of primary concern in the original focus groups. Following this brief summary of results, the researcher transferred power to the moderator and explicitly positioned herself as a learner for the remainder of the session, only speaking when asked a question by the moderator or a participant. The moderator then elicited feedback from focus group participants on major themes from each of the areas discussed, including participants’ general reactions as well as their specific advice for the prosecutors’ office based on the findings of the research. As of the time of this writing, the research team is also composing a policy brief for the local community organization highlighting the most relevant findings from the project as a whole. This document will be shared with organization leaders and directly with the original participants themselves via email.

Practical Considerations

The research team faced several practical challenges that future researchers should consider when adopting a CBPR approach, especially when working with justice-involved community members.

Inclusion Criteria

It is important that researchers clearly articulate inclusion criteria and the rationale for those criteria. These parameters of who can participate in the research has the potential to determine the dynamics and the content of the conversation. For example, one community group leader told us that we should be aware of the potential for women to be uncomfortable in a mixed-group with men. Although in this project we were unable to coordinate focus groups separated by sex, we did notify participants ahead of time that the focus group would contain a mixture of men and women (when relevant). However, depending on the focus of the research study, this may be a relevant consideration for future researchers adopting a CBPR framework (for additional considerations on focus group composition, see Mellinger, Lowrey-Kinberg, & Barak, 2023).

We also found that our inclusion criteria resulted in unforeseen recruitment challenges. During the recruitment phase, we were contacted by several individuals who were interested in joining the focus groups but who were ineligible due to having been convicted more than five years prior (although they had been recently released). Similarly, we were surprised that in two jurisdictions our community organization contacts struggled to identify interested individuals with justice system contact within the last 5 years. It may be possible that individuals with the most recent contact were either were not being served by the local organizations we partnered with or were still struggling with the consequences of recent legal entanglements and unable to attend the focus groups due to logistical challenges. Extending the window for recruitment, modifying inclusion criteria, or conducting multiple groups in each location could alleviate this challenge.

Attrition Rate

Another consideration inherent in composing focus groups is the generally high rate of attrition. In the case of the focus groups held for this project, 25-50% of registered participants did not attend the scheduled focus group. These figures are consistent with reports from prior published work on focus groups with the general population(Morgan, 1997; Wilkinson, 2004). Over-recruitment by up to 50%, when possible, can help mitigate this challenge.

Attrition may be a particularly acute issue in justice-involved populations who, at baseline, face significant difficulties in the reentry process, including lack of stable housing, lack of family support, and untreated physical and mental health conditions (Baer et al., 2006). These issues can, unfortunately, affect long-term research collaborations. For example, Marlow et al. (2015) , reported that 35% of participants in their study experienced a drug relapse during the first month of their peer-mentoring study, and were therefore unable to complete the study. In discussing a similar issue, McCracken (2019) mentions the challenges associated with maintaining contact with incarcerated co-researchers. In her book, she notes, “Our loss of co-authors is also a result of the challenges formerly incarcerated women face in the world. As of this writing, one co-researcher has died, one we have not heard from in over two years, and one does not have the time to participate.”

In the present study, the research team had hoped to be able to include more of the original focus group participants in the follow-up groups so they could learn the answers to their questions for prosecutors. Unfortunately, only three of the original 24 participants responded to our invitation to attend follow-up groups. Almost two years had elapsed between the original focus groups and the follow-up groups, and studies suggest that the recidivism rate within this time frame can be up to 40% (Office of Research and Data, 2022). Crafting ongoing relationships with these community members via regular email or phone check-ins could potentially increase this rate of participation from original focus groups members, or at a minimum, maintain an active line of communication to better understand the high attrition rate (see Farrell et al., 2021 for the importance of relationship-building in CBPR).

Moderator Selection

The inclusion of a moderator who had direct knowledge of the justice system was pivotal in the research teams’ ability to obtain candid responses. In selecting a moderator, future researchers should evaluate how closely candidates’ lived experiences align with those of the focus groups’ target population, as well as whether he or she has any experience in public speaking or moderating similar discussions. Here too, researchers can learn from community organizations whether there may be local options for moderators with whom community members can feel most at ease.

Medium

Finally, the research team elected to use Zoom as a medium for holding the focus groups. The early portion of this research was conducted in mid-2022, when the spread of COVID-19 was a salient consideration in many locations. Although organization leaders agreed that Zoom was an appropriate medium for group discussions, subsequent conversations with participants and the group moderator indicated that Zoom was not a preferred medium among many formerly incarcerated, as it is a less familiar modality than other phone applications. Conversely, applications such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger were considered more accessible methods of enabling video conferencing. If researchers elect to use a virtual medium, they may consider polling registered participants beforehand as to the most convenient method of video conferencing.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, conducting qualitative research via videoconferencing technology has become increasingly popular. However, the benefits of this new medium should be weighed against potential drawbacks and risks. A full discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of the current paper (see Santhosh et al., 2021; Falter et al., 2022), but a few considerations are worth highlighting here. First, conducting interviews and focus groups using a virtual medium can remove “transportation and transit time barriers and allows for increased flexibility to consider scheduling focus groups or interviews at nontraditional times to accommodate the participants’ schedules” (Santhosh et al., 2021, p. 177). This is a particularly salient concern among the justice-involved, who may face more significant challenges when it comes to transportation, missing work, or scheduling childcare than members of the general population.

Conversely, however, there are several potential risks to using videoconferencing in qualitative research with the justice-involved. As described in work with the general population, potential risks include decreased participation, environmental distractions, and the possibility of technology failure (Santhosh et al., 2021; Falter et al., 2022). Further, asking participants, especially those from traditionally marginalized groups, to engage in a technology-heavy medium of any kind has the potential to reinforce existing hierarchies. For example, participants may not have access to a high-quality camera or microphone, and may not be familiar with how to operate these. This has the potential to depress their overall participation or make them feel less willing to express unpopular perspectives or those that challenge the status-quo.

Discussion

Honoring justice-involved community members’ knowledge and experience has the potential to strengthen all aspects of the research process. This paper describes findings from community focus groups composed of justice-involved individuals in which they shared their experiences with and concerns surrounding the pre-trial process, prosecutors’ priorities, and recommended directions for research. The main themes from these focus groups formed the basis for prosecutor interview questions, which were then implemented within two larger research projects examining prosecutor discretion. This paper provides both methodological and practical recommendations for researchers seeking to adopt a CBPR approach to their own work.

Implications

Several implications stem from the present research. First, a CBPR orientation has advantages for both researchers and community members and should, therefore, be used more frequently by criminal justice researchers, especially those with a focus on the courts. As described above, the scope of the two larger research projects within which the focus groups were embedded were influenced by the concerns of community members in several key ways. For example, prosecutors’ motivations for pursuing their career is an area of inquiry that has received little attention from researchers, and yet was one of community members’ primary concerns. This led to researchers opening prosecutor interviews in the PWP project with the question “How did you come to be a prosecutor?” and receiving a wide range of responses. Similarly, although racial disparities are an extensive area of research within criminal justice, little is known about prosecutors’ perspectives of these disparities (but see Dunlea, 2022). Based on the strong views that community members expressed regarding the racist nature of the justice system, the research team devoted the final portion of the interview to eliciting responses from prosecutors on their perceived role in perpetuating racial disparities, the causes of disparities, and potential solutions.

Indeed, racial disparities in particular proved challenging to translate from focus group discussion to interview questions. Despite the forcefulness of focus group members’ views on racism within the justice system, it was necessary to craft open-ended interview questions that would elicit candid responses from prosecutors, rather than purely emotional reactions, defensiveness, or efforts to resist answering. Ultimately, the research team elected to adopt questions from previously published research (Dunlea, 2022) in the hopes of eliciting as much conversational interview data as possible and apply a critical lens to the responses.

More broadly, CBPR researchers should be aware of potential conflicts that can arise when issues that community members raise are inherently critical of those same professionals on whom researchers depend for access. Researchers must carefully consider how to address this dilemma in the context of their own field of work. Recognizing that racial disparities would be a sensitive, yet critically important, issue for prosecutors, the research team was guided by Rubin and Rubin’s (2005) guidance on “asking the tough questions” (p. 118) and took several steps to mitigate potential stonewalling by interviewees. These strategies included establishing rapport prior to this section and transitioning to the sensitive topic using perceived contradictions in the interviewees’ own responses up until that point.

Above are examples of how community members influenced the scope of the research projects in ways that were not necessarily indicated by published research and yet elicited rich data from prosecutors. Although administrative and quantitative data can be limited in the prosecution sphere (Hamann & Lowrey-Kinberg, 2022), in projects where researchers have control over the quantitative data to be collected, mixed methods research can also benefit from the insights of community members. Thus, this article makes the argument that future court researchers should adopt a CBPR orientation and invite community members to shape the direction and scope of research that, ultimately, directly impacts their lives.

Further, CBPR, by its very nature, inverts the traditional power structures inherent in the research process. As Harrington and colleagues (2019) write “This method decolonizes research practice from those who are affluent and privilegedand refocuses the community as the authority" resulting in a “bottom up” instead of a “top down” (p. 216) approach to addressing societal problems. When researchers invite the community, especially those who have been traditionally marginalized, to be the sources of knowledge, this creates greater trust in the research process and results that can be more readily utilized in addressing community concerns.

Conclusion

At the formative stage of two projects on prosecutorial discretion, justice-involved community members shared their concerns with the pre-trial process and with prosecutors in particular. The main themes were distilled and synthesized with existing research in the field of prosecutorial discretion to form a set of interview questions for prosecutors that directly addressed justice-involved community members’ primary areas of concern. This article describes this method of involving community members in the research process, including a discussion of cultural humility, positionality, and transfer of power, as well as practical considerations for researchers seeking to use this method in future work. Ultimately, this article argues for expanded use of CBPR in criminal justice research in the courts setting, as the aim and scope of the larger research projects benefited significantly from the insights of those directly impacted by the justice system.

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Contributors

Dr. Belén Lowrey-Kinberg is an Associate Project Scientist in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD from the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on prosecutor decision-making, wrongful convictions, and the application of linguistic methods to issues in the criminal justice system.

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the help of the local community organizations and community members who shared their time and expertise during focus groups. The author also thanks Arnold Ventures for funding the Local Prosecution Reform Project and the Partnering with Prosecutors to Reduce Racial Disproportionalities Project, Johnny Perez for moderating the focus groups, and Jon Gould, Rachel Bowman, and Kristine Hamann, who collaborated on the research reported here.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

This research was classified as exempt by the University of California, Irvine IRB.

Appendix A: Local Prosecution Reform Protocol

Today, we’re interested in hearing your perspectives on the local court system in [jurisdiction]. So specifically, we’re interested in the part of the criminal justice process that takes place after the police make an arrest up through the resolution of the case whether that’s a case dismissal/drop, diversion to programing or an alternative court (e.g., drug court), a plea agreement, or some other outcome. If you’re sharing about a specific event, please give a general timeframe of when that event occurred (was it 6 months ago, a year, five years, etc.).

1. Tell me about positive experiences you’ve had with the criminal court system in [jurisdiction]

2. Tell me about negative experiences you’ve had with the criminal court system in [jurisdiction]

3. Suppose that you were in charge and could make one change that would make the local criminal court system better. What would you do?

4. In [year], [current district attorney took over as the lead prosecutor. [They] campaigned for this position on a criminal justice reform platform and called for things like increasing the use of diversion and focusing resources on more serious and violent crimes rather than things like non-violent drug offenses. Thinking back over the past [number of years], what has the prosecutor’s office done well? What still needs improvement?

5. What do you want to know about how prosecutors make decisions?

1. Ending Questions

   1. Of all the things we discussed, what to you is the most important?

   2. Provide a brief summary of the main points discussed and then ask "Is this an adequate summary?

   3. Is there anything else that you think is important to share?

Appendix B: Partnering with Prosecutors Community Focus Group Protocol

Today, we’re interested in hearing your perspectives on the local court system in [jurisdiction]. So specifically, we’re interested in the part of the criminal justice process that takes place after the police make an arrest up through the resolution of the case whether that’s a case dismissal/drop, diversion to programing or an alternative court (e.g., drug court), a plea agreement, or some other outcome. If you’re sharing about a specific event, please give a general timeframe of when that event occurred (was it 6 months ago, a year, five years, etc.).

1. Tell me about disappointments you’ve had with the criminal court system in [jurisdiction].

Follow up with:

2. Do any specific events come to mind?

3. Tell me about positive experiences you’ve had with the criminal court system in [jurisdiction].

Follow up with:

4. Do any specific events come to mind?

5. Suppose that you were in charge and could make one change that would make the local criminal court system better. What would you do?

6. Imagine you could sit down and have a conversation with a prosecutor. What would you ask him or her?

7. What do you wish the prosecutor in your case would have known about you?

8. What information should he or she not have had access to?

9. Do you think prosecutors have the same priorities as the community? Why or why not?

Follow up with:

10. Do any specific events come to mind?

2. Ending Questions

   1. Of all the things we discussed, what to you is the most important?

   2. Provide a brief summary of the main points discussed and then ask "Is this an adequate summary?

   3. Is there anything else that you think is important to share?